Imagine this: it’s late afternoon and you’re relaxing inside your caravan on the Rosebud foreshore. You’ve spent most of the day sailing on Port Phillip Bay. Suddenly you hear the sound of rapid gunfire, followed by screams. You poke your head out of the door. At the other end of the camp park you can see people running for their lives.

You sprint down to the beach where your two kids have been making sandcastles. Get in the boat – you yell – now!

You heave the kids into the yacht and make your escape. Others follow your lead, and soon there is a flotilla of small yachts tacking behind you. Luckily a tailwind speeds you across to the other side of the bay.

When you get to Queenscliff Harbour there are armed men in uniforms hauling people out of their yachts. They’re wearing badges that say ‘Stop The Boats’ and one of them escorts you and your kids to a waiting bus. As you’re shoved up the stairs of the bus you notice the sign above the windshield: ROSEBUD ILLEGALS.

The bus is driven up the hill to the old Queenscliff Fort. You, your two kids and the other Rosebud campers are all herded inside the high red brick walls of the fort. You try telling the guards what has happened – the gunshots, the screams – but they ignore you. Your family is ushered into a small room and you are locked inside.

You remain in that fort for the next five years. In the winters your room is freezing and in the summers it is steaming hot. When your kids get sick there are no specialist doctors available to treat them. The guards limit your access to the phone. No journalists are allowed inside the fort to interview you about your escape across the bay. Sometimes you listen to the local radio station, where you hear talkback callers describing you as a ‘terrorist’.

When one of your kids reveals they have been sexually abused inside the fort, you collar a guard and demand an investigation. Instead, your children are removed from the fort and sent to live with strangers in Queenscliff.

Left alone, you sink into a state of profound hopelessness.

Aren’t we lucky to be living in a civilized country where this kind of thing would never happen?